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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28815990">Cien Años de Compañerismo</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/gisellelx/pseuds/gisellelx'>gisellelx</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Twilight Series - Stephenie Meyer</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Canon Compliant, F/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-04-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 11:20:28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>8,328</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28815990</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/gisellelx/pseuds/gisellelx</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>In 1911, they found each other. In 1921, they rescued each other. In 2021, they celebrate an anniversary for the ages. An evolving short story series presented as a toast to a hundred years of enduring love.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Carlisle Cullen/Esme Cullen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>28</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Hotspots</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>Hotspots</strong>
</p><p>
  <em>Mid-October, 2020</em><br/>
<em>Houston, TX</em>
</p><p>Esme wasn't entirely surprised when the doorbell rang. Ordering things from Amazon was a proclivity of her husband's in his attempts to escape the boredom of his diurnal captivity, and it was nearly a daily occurrence that at least one package arrived. So she dutifully donned a mask and opened the door. But it was not the mail carrier, and there was no box with its familiar lopsided black arrow. Instead it was a UPS driver, with not one box but dozens, flattened and bundled on a large hand cart.</p><p>"Are you sure these are for this unit?" she asked.</p><p>The delivery man looked at his tablet. "Cullen?"</p><p>She nodded. "That's us." She stepped aside as the driver pushed the cart through the door of the second-floor condominium, and leaned the bundles against the couch. He thrust an electronic pad at her, and she scrawled her looping signature. She closed the door behind the driver and turned back to her work, eyeing the bundles every now and again.</p><p>They moved frequently. Even though the goal was often seven to ten years, it could sometimes be more like five, especially if Carlisle received one too many recruiter calls and his willingness to stay put in a low-paying rural hospital started to become suspect, or worse, when a member of the family experienced a slip-up. But even at their most frequent, nothing had ever held a candle to 2020. They had already been living in Paris when her husband came home and explained he'd accepted an emergency stationing in Lombardy. Viruses don't make decisions, and this meant that Alice couldn't quite stay a full step ahead of the outbreaks. Carlisle had insisted the family hunker down in their small home in Toulouse while he took shorter and longer stints in the neighboring countries: six weeks in Italy, four in Spain, two in Germany, another six in France.</p><p>Then suddenly it wasn't Europe in crisis, but their home country. And even though he'd protested that he was not planning to be home any more frequently, and at least in France, she'd have the children, Esme had insisted that her husband not be on the other side of an ocean alone. So they'd hopped one of their jets and settled into a rented condominium within a few blocks of the sprawling Texas Medical Center. As far as anyone could tell, they actually weren't far from where Jasper had grown up, an area which had once been rolling farmland and now was an asphalt jungle.</p><p>She spent the days sketching, planning, and consulting for the three firms who used her expertise. Occasionally she took a zoom call with her children. Meanwhile, her husband worked himself ragged, and no amount of imploring from her or their children could get him to slow his pace. Vampires didn't tire, but she had watched him become increasingly scattered and withdrawn.</p><p>It was becoming abundantly clear why the last global pandemic had driven Carlisle Cullen to the brink of insanity.</p><p>It was just after dawn, almost eleven hours later, that Carlisle returned. His white coat sat slightly askew on his broad shoulders, and his scrub pants hung loosely from his hips. He looked at the boxes at once.</p><p>"Oh. Those were supposed to arrive tomorrow," he said simply.</p><p>"I was wondering why no warning. I thought perhaps you were planning to leave me." She helped him out of his coat, calling back to him as she carried it to the washing machine in their kitchen.</p><p>He shot her the shy, boyish smile which made her fall desperately in love with him again every time he smiled it.</p><p>"No, of course not." He didn't meet her eyes, instead reaching into his bag and retrieving his iPad. "The caseload is improving here and R(t) is down, finally. It's almost 1. And test positivity at the medical center is also way down." He spoke the foreign language of the pandemic, the figures and statistics she had learned to track if only to understand his nearly incoherent mumblings when he came home in the mornings.</p><p>"And so you were coming home to tell me we're moving."</p><p>He nodded, and thrust his iPad toward her. It was open to an app called Redfin, and it took her just a second longer than it should have to understand what she was looking at. She didn't comprehend the silhouette of the building, with the anachronous addition lopsidedly attached to one side, and the fact that someone had, at some point, painted it a garish salmon pink which was now flaking. So it was only the address which allowed her to finally make the connection, and she gasped.</p><p>"Carlisle..." she breathed.</p><p>He grinned. "Wisconsin is beginning to crumble under this thing. Iron County is turning into a hotspot, and I won't be too far from Green Bay, either."</p><p>Her lips were over his, and her hands were in his hair before he could say anything more. She kissed him frantically and he kissed back, pulling her into his lap and putting his hands at her waist as he laughed.</p><p>"How did you—"</p><p>"I've had it on alert for years," he said, laughing. "Obviously, the stars aligned, for it to have appeared right when it makes sense to move back. I called the day the listing appeared and offered thirty thousand above asking. You know how I hate overpaying for real estate, but—"</p><p>She silenced him with her kisses again.</p><p>"Let me see it again?"</p><p>He nodded, not removing her from his lap as they pored over the listing photos together. The back garden, where she'd so carefully worked when she'd needed the distraction from newborn thirst, which had once been pristine and full of roses—it was absolutely destroyed, overgrown with ivy and grass. The foundation looked like it would be in need of a good jack. The addition was awful and would need to go. She might add a deck to the back which would match the character of the home.</p><p>"Oh," she sighed sadly as she scrolled.</p><p>Her husband raised his eyebrows.</p><p>"They took down the wall between the kitchen and the dining room." She hated open concept floorplans, especially the lust which caused so many people to destroy the original architecture of these grand old pieces of art in pursuit of them.</p><p>Carlisle only laughed. "I am certain that can be remedied, Mrs. Cullen. I'll have the lumber and drywall on its way as soon as we close."</p><p>"It will need to be lath to be done right."</p><p>He laughed harder. "Whatever you say."</p><p>She swiped her finger again. Their bedroom—several coats of paint changed, and carpeted, for some reason, which would have to go. Carlisle's study, where he'd so carefully helped her learn to exercise control—it looked barren and dusty. Edward's bedroom, which was almost unchanged. None of the wall colors fit the period of the home, and the kitchen had been remodeled probably two or three times so that it looked somehow both modern and woefully out of date.</p><p>"It will be so different there without Edward," she sighed.</p><p>"Oh yes," her husband said, his expression neutral. "<em>Whatever </em>will we do in that house without Edward intruding on our every movement." He pressed his finger to the screen, bringing up their son's former bedroom in fullscreen mode. "We've never been intimate in there," he said mischievously.</p><p>"Edward would <em>die.</em>"</p><p>He kissed her cheek and then continued on with soft, fluttering kisses to her ear, where he placed his lips and whispered, "Edward is in France."</p><p>She giggled, turning so that she could rake her hands through his hair again. "Thank you, Carlisle. This is amazing."</p><p>He shrugged. "In the midst of this"—he gestured widely as though to encompass all of the last year and the time to come—"I don't know what else I'll be able to give you for our centennial anniversary."</p><p>The iPad bounced as she dropped it onto the couch cushions and straddled his lap.</p><p>"There's nothing more perfect than going home," she answered. And then she found herself beneath her husband's strong body as he attacked her with his kiss.</p><p>~||x||~</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>A Note on The Series:</p><p>Something has bitten me over on tumblr. It started when I couldn't keep Carlisle in the southern U.S. when the pandemic was raging in the midwest, and so I had to move them. Then I needed to see the conversation when he told Esme they were moving. And then someone asked a question, and someone else asked another question and well, now there are at least three, and since it makes sense to be ficcing these two heavily in the year of their 100th anniversary, I guess this is a thing now. I'm not making promises about updates and speed, but I have many, many moments from their lives together that I've always wanted to write. They will dance around the timeline, and I'll place you at the start of each piece. I am terrible at just writing free-form fics, though, so don't be surprised if this starts to get some additional shape.</p><p>These follow canon and my headcanon that is in my other fics. Dates and timelines not specified in canon are taken from either my thinking on AskCarlisleCullen or OhMyCarlisle's timelines and thinking on AskEsmeCullen. I seem so far to be hashing out the first drafts on tumblr, so if you want updates early, check them out there. And unlike most of my fics which are pretty tightly conceived, I'm totally open to suggestion on this one. Throw an ask on tumblr or leave a review. I don't make guarantees I'll write it, but it just might make my fingers start to itch. So far, everything has been coming through Esme's voice, but I'm listening for who wants the reins and I expect Carlisle will want them at least some of the time.</p><p>Trigger warning: I started with this one because it needs no warning, which allows me to put the warning on the bottom. You know the Cullens' backstories. They are dark. I don't intend to walk away from any of it, wherever it becomes relevant. Rape, suicide, and domestic violence are all on the table here and that's just Esme. I'm sure there will also be some things which won't occur to me until the last minute. I'll try to write a good opening paragraph so that you know whose backstory might be about to get dropped on you, but consider this an "author chooses not to use archive warnings" warning.</p><p>I don't love constant author's notes because I like very clean reads. This is in conflict with the fact that I do love reading my readers' thoughts and responding. So take this as a one-time note that there's never a time I don't want to hear from you. I'd love to entertain your thoughts, especially because it might spur something new. This series will be un-betaed, and it's hard to proofread your own writing; I always welcome readers' catching of mistakes.</p><p>Yep, somehow, I'm writing Carlesme. It was bound to happen eventually. Happy Reading.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Bodies</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
<strong>Bodies</strong>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Early Fall, 1922</em><br/>
<em>Ashland, WI</em>
</p><p>A wide band of sunshine bathed the entire bed in light. It picked up every aspect of her husband's perfection: his high cheekbones and sharp jaw, the broad shoulder blades which gave way to a strong chest and an intricately defined abdomen. It glinted off the wiry, dark blond hair which smattered across his pectoral muscles and snaked its way down his stomach to the thick curls between his legs, where her hand had been a moment before.</p><p>Even now, nearly a year into their marriage, Esme still had the sense that she did not deserve this. Did not deserve this beautiful man, did not deserve his gentle smile, did not deserve the sensuous way his body moved under her fingers.</p><p>She <em>certainly </em>did not deserve to stand here, gazing at him naked.</p><p>The sun made her skin shine, too. She'd clutched part of the sheet to her body when she'd risen after their coupling, pulling it from Carlisle and draping it over her midsection. It didn't hide much, and she was again struck by the fact that strictly, it didn't need to—Carlisle lay regarding her with the same placid contentment with which she regarded him.</p><p>Esme stepped more fully into the sunbeam, allowing the sheet to slide from her hands and puddle at her feet. She heard a tiny intake of breath behind her and let a smile grace her lips. Her hands fell to their most natural resting position: over her abdomen, just as they had in her final months as a human. When she could feel her son moving; sometimes the faintest flutter against her palm and other times a kick with such force it would cause her breath to catch.</p><p>Her hand remembered. Her body remembered. Her mind, however, did not. It had been Carlisle who had broken into the county registrar's office and looked up the certificate of live birth, filled out at the hospital at the same time as the certificate of death because she'd given birth at the boardinghouse and so almost no one had known her child even existed until he was hours away from not existing any longer. It had been Carlisle who had told her his name. She mouthed it now, stroking a hand across where he once had been, when she once had been human. The stretch marks were gone; the purpled veins in her legs utterly invisible once more.</p><p>When she turned back to the bed, her husband's languid expression had tensed into a furrowed brow. She picked up the sheet and padded back across the short distance from the window and took her place beside him. He put an arm around her and pulled her to his body, his hand running to the same place her hand had just been. She shivered but didn't flinch away. She had done so, months ago, when they had been still teaching each other the language of lovemaking: before he learned that his lips at the shell of her ear took her straight to bliss, before she learned that for him, it was hers on his clavicle. When she'd learned to be careful of his hand and his arm and the marks left there by the brutal attack that had ripped him from the world of the living; when he'd learned to touch her abdomen with reverence for the boy who'd once been nurtured there.</p><p>As assuredly as if he were Edward, able to read her thoughts, he bent his head and kissed their hands. "I would give him back to you, if I could," he whispered.</p><p>She nodded.</p><p>"I know."</p><p>He was quiet for a long moment, and his hands moved from her abdomen to the small of her back and back again. He didn't tire of touching her any more than she could ever tire of touching him. But the next question he asked was unexpected.</p><p>"Do you regret this?"</p><p>Her brow furrowed. "Regret…?"</p><p>"This." He moved his hand back to her abdomen, sliding down to rest on her hip. The stroke was soft and firm at once, as gentle as it was deliberate. "I turned you so close to when you gave birth. And venom fixes trauma. But this isn't trauma, it's where your body was. If you'd been turned later, your body would've had time to change its shape again."</p><p>She put her hand over his, and he flipped his palm upward, their fingers interlacing.</p><p>"Does it bother you?" she asked.</p><p>But even as she said it she knew this was absurd. If there was one thing true about her husband it was that his praise was genuine. She feared at first, that all men were deep down like Charles, even the kind, blond doctor about whom she'd fantasized for ten years. That they only said the good things in precursor to the bad; that every ounce of praise was only a setup to later violence. It took her a long time to accept that it was possible for a man to be as gentle as her husband was, for a man to praise as genuinely as he did, to be as sincere in his lust as he was in his love.</p><p>The smile was boyish. "I find every inch of your body exhilarating, Mrs. Cullen. Shall I demonstrate again?"</p><p>She giggled. "No, not yet." She unlaced her fingers from his, bringing them back to the top of her belly. "And no, Carlisle. I don't regret this. This is…my proof."</p><p>He cocked his eyebrow.</p><p>"My proof that he existed. That even though I can't see him, or hold him, and that I can't even <em>smell</em> him any longer on his blanket…he was. And I—<em>my body</em>—will forever bear witness to that."</p><p>Her husband was taller than her by a head and shoulders, but here, in the bed, he had moved so that he is below her, so that he could kiss the place where her hands lay. And so it was the top of his head that she kissed.</p><p>"You left me with our son," she whispered into his hair.</p><p>She felt more than saw his expression, the way his face wrenched in confusion.</p><p>"Our?"</p><p>Her smile was soft. "You taught me there was a man who was nothing like Charles. I knew there was a man with so much goodness, so much love, who would be such a fine father. I left because I knew that if that man couldn't raise my child then no man would."</p><p>She took Carlisle's hand, placing it on the side of her belly and closed her eyes, imagining with all her might the feeling of her baby's kick, the way it would have felt under his inhumanly sensitive fingers. The look of awe that she could imagine sliding across his face.</p><p>"Charles may have fathered him," she continued gently, "but Carlisle, you have <em>always </em>been his father."</p><p>Vampires don't cry, which was one of the most startling aspects of her new existence. But her husband gulped deeply now. "Our son…" he whispered, and she nodded.</p><p>"<em>Our </em>son."</p><p>He didn't say anything else. They lay together for a long time, neither of them saying anything, just letting their hands lie together on her body. On the places where she wasn't perfectly svelte, where her hips had widened and her breasts had become heavy, and where just that bit of extra build had accumulated in preparation of nourishing another life that had been cut short. Her husband's hands moved over these parts, reverently, carefully, as he stayed silent. He pressed his lips to her abdomen, which sent unexpected shivers down her spine.</p><p>"Dr. Cullen?" she said at last.</p><p>His reply wasn't actually English. "Mmmr?"</p><p>"You asked a few minutes ago if you needed to demonstrate how exhilarating you find my body?"</p><p>He smirked. "So I did."</p><p>She ran her hand through his hair. "That would be welcome now."</p><p>His laughter was clear. And in an instant, Esme found herself swept under a cool sheet and the broad rays of a sunbeam.</p><p>~||x||~</p><p>for <strong>needahugfromesme</strong>, who has great ideas</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Daffodils</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>Daffodils</strong>
</p>
<p>
  <em>March 1, 1921</em>
  <br/>
  <em>Ashland, WI</em>
</p>
<p>Carlisle was angry.</p>
<p>Well, not <em>angry. </em>Esme had to amend her understanding of that word. Charles had been <em>angry</em>. She remembered what anger looked like, sounded like, felt like against and within her body. If Carlisle was able to get angry, she certainly hadn't seen it yet, and where he was now wasn't that.</p>
<p>Carlisle was upset. That word better matched the draw in his brow, the tightness of his jaw. He paced his study, slowly, because the room was too small to afford him the room to move at his full speed.</p>
<p>Edward had come to her a week ago, in the garden, at night, the moonlight shading across both their bodies such that it made their skin seem to become a silvery shimmer. He'd sat across from her, his knees pulled to his chest, watching as she carefully put bulbs into the ground. It was still too early; the ground still likely to freeze. They were so much further north than London, the tiny rural enclave where she'd so freely swung from the branches of the huge crabapple tree in her front yard. At this time of year, the daffodils would already be starting to peek their way out from the thawing dirt, their orange and yellow-white heads cheerily greeting the tired Ohioan farmhands who were starting to prepare the fields. Her mother had always kept the beds neatly; ensuring that year after year a crop of the bright little flowers would appear just in time for St. David's Day.</p>
<p>And so she was planting them, in the moonlight, knowing that it would be several weeks before they made their appearance. Like everything, it was the <em>time </em>which had shifted. The way her body moved so much more quickly. The way she could perch in perfect stillness on a tree branch, no longer worried about taking a fall and fracturing her leg. The way death had stolen away from her in three days of agony, and she'd awoken to the kind, concerned face of this man she had never forgotten.</p>
<p><em>Carlisle</em>.</p>
<p>She'd asked his name, ten years ago. She remembered the way his brow furrowed in confusion when he'd told her. The tiny hitch in his voice when he admitted that he didn't remember his mother. She hung onto every word, stored every flickering glance he'd given her. Even through the haze of the laudanum she'd remembered, and it had been so easy, sliding into this household with the kind doctor and the affable, but aloof, boy.</p>
<p>Edward had sat in the garden for a half hour, watching her dig, plant a bulb, and pat the earth back down, over and over, before he made clear his reason for coming outside.</p>
<p>"You <em>have </em>to tell him, Esme," he said, his tone hard and frustrated and she sighed.</p>
<p>She didn't <em>want</em> to burden Edward. He was a boy. His body had never filled out as it would have had he matured even a few years more. And even as an immortal, he was only twenty. The images that she tried valiantly to keep from her mind, lest he see them—she knew they hurt him. Charles' hands, the way they moved when she had displeased him, so fast she didn't even see them before she felt their impact. The constant fear. The way nothing was ever good enough—the groceries she bought, too expensive, the curtains she sewed with inexpert seams. Edward had heard the bellowing voice, felt her entire body tense at the sound of the good shoes crossing the threshold, the wool coat and hat finding their way to the hook by the door.</p>
<p>And what had happened over and over on the second floor, in the privacy of their bedroom—Edward had seen that, too.</p>
<p>"I can't," she told him.</p>
<p>"He has to know."</p>
<p>She shook her head.</p>
<p>"Esme…he cares for you. He <em>has</em> to know." The boy's voice was hard, frustrated.</p>
<p>The words caught her up short. He cared <em>for </em>her, she knew that much. He'd taught her to hunt, and he gave her things to read. He showered her with anything she wanted; dresses, furniture, even flowers when she asked. But he was so reserved, disappearing into his study when they weren't together.</p>
<p>"How will he take it," she whispered, and Edward only shook his head.</p>
<p>"I don't know," he'd said. "But he has to know."</p>
<p>So it had been three days ago, now, that she'd told Carlisle. And the gentle doctor had listened, and nodded, and gently touched her shoulder. She'd cried, the heaving tearless sobs that were now the mark of her new existence. And he'd comforted her, squeezing her shoulder, even stroking her cheek. When she felt calm, and he was certain of her security, he announced he was going to take a walk and disappeared for several hours.</p>
<p>And that had been that, she thought. He listened, and he absorbed her story, and it was one more thing about her that he simply took as part of her. She was grateful for the acceptance, pleased with the quiet way he'd accepted it. But it unraveled in the days after. The blond doctor withdrew. He stopped talking to her. Stopped touching her shoulder in the affectionate way he'd begun to before she'd given him the information. When she entered a room he flinched, looking away.</p>
<p>She felt…<em>afraid </em>of him, which seemed so uncharacteristic for <em>Carlisle, </em>the gentle man she'd met ten years ago and who had given her no reason to doubt him now. So she followed him here, to his study, where he had warmly invited her to join him anytime. He stood at once, began pacing, making her wonder if her presence was unwelcome.</p>
<p>He was so obviously upset.</p>
<p>"You're angry with me," she said quietly, and he became perfectly still at once. It was an eerie stillness, a stillness she was still getting used to. Carlisle was so good at human habits, and Edward only slightly less so, that when they stopped moving in the way their kind were able to, a perfect cessation of motion, not breathing, not so much as twitching—it still took her by surprise.</p>
<p>He shook his head. "I'm not angry with you."</p>
<p>"You've stopped touching me." Because she was undesirable? She supposed she deserved that.</p>
<p>He looked at her, his brow furrowed. "Have I?"</p>
<p>She nodded.</p>
<p>"I didn't realize." He came to her side, seated himself on the arm of the chair. He took her hand, placing it between both of his and caressing her knuckles.</p>
<p>"You're angry."</p>
<p>And in a flash, he was on the other side of the room, his back against the wall.</p>
<p>She swallowed. This much was right. "You're angry," she repeated.</p>
<p>He shook his head. "Not with you, Esme. Never with you."</p>
<p>"But you're angry."</p>
<p>He nodded, slowly, standing back up, dropping her hand and thrusting his hands into his hair. They clutched at the golden locks, squeezing frantically, intermittently as he began to pace again.</p>
<p>"I just… What beasts are we, men? To do this? I stopped touching you because I can't bear the thought that my hands might feel like—"</p>
<p>"You could never be him," she said quietly.</p>
<p>He shook his head. "You don't know that."</p>
<p>She shrank back into the chair, one of two luxurious ones he had installed in his study. For what reason, she suddenly wondered. Edward didn't need to sit, and neither did she. Carlisle was so perfect in his charade, in the nearly three centuries of masking himself as a human, that he rarely missed these finer details which so easily could go unnoticed.</p>
<p>What did he mean? At once, her former husband's face materialized in her mind. Already, as Edward and Carlisle told her it would, his visage was growing dimmer, less distinct, as though he were in a dream. He was becoming a faceless demon; her only memory his hands and his voice. But the memory of his fist was crystal clear…</p>
<p>Downstairs, the piano abruptly stopped.</p>
<p>"You could never be him," she repeated.</p>
<p>And he whirled. His eyes, the glorious amber eyes she loved, flashed dark. When he spoke, his voice was high pitched and rapid. "Do you know that, Esme? Do you know that I could somehow not be him? That I don't have it within me to hurt someone? Are you certain? Because I want to hurt <em>him</em>."</p>
<p>The shock of his words made her flinch, and he didn't miss it. His body lost a little of its tension. His shoulders relaxed ever so slightly, the fist she didn't realize he'd balled—did he know he'd done it?—released itself back flat.</p>
<p>"I want to hurt him so badly," he choked. "That's why I couldn't be near you. I can't let you see me this way."</p>
<p>His hand opened and closed again, as though it couldn't decide what to do.</p>
<p>She shrank back. "Please," she felt herself saying, and the words were old. She didn't mean to be begging Carlisle, of all people, but the begging felt familiar. "Please don't. Don't be upset."</p>
<p>"Esme, of course I'm <em>upset</em>!" he bellowed. "I <em>love</em> you!"</p>
<p>He stopped suddenly, swallowed, and staggered several steps backward</p>
<p>"You…" she tried to repeat the words but found they didn't make sense.</p>
<p>Carlisle seemed just as surprised as he repeated the words. "I…<em>love</em> you."</p>
<p>Esme didn't think about what she did next. Charles had said those words to her, what? Once? Maybe twice? Enough that they were already fading? She still wasn't used to the way her new body moved, to the fact that as Carlisle protested, she was stronger than he was, and would be for a good while. When she shoved him against the desk, it creaked and groaned under their combined weight; when she straddled him and pressed her hands against his jaw.</p>
<p>"I love you," he groaned again into her lips. The desk protested further.</p>
<p>"I love you," she repeated.</p>
<p>He placed his hands on her face, pulling her back from him so that she could look into his eyes. They were the orange gold, partway between when he'd hunted recently and when he would need to hunt immediately. She knew, now, after watching for weeks, how his eyes went from the flaxen gold, to the light yellow, to the darkness of old honeycomb before he set out to hunt again. Now they were just the right yellow; the pale color of the corona of the flower she had planted in the cold garden, weeks late.</p>
<p>And as she pressed her lips to his again, she realized that perhaps her daffodils had bloomed on St. David's Day, after all.</p>
<p>~||x||~</p>
<p>for <strong>jessica314</strong></p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Walls</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>Walls</strong>
</p>
<p>
  <em>November, 2020</em>
  <br/>
  <em>Ashland, WI</em>
</p>
<p>To live with Esme Platt Cullen was to live in a carefully ordered chaos.</p>
<p>In more stable times, and in more stable homes, this chaos had been the chaos of their children, now six-almost-seven of them. Emmett and Jasper, enjoying a boisterous playfight. Rosalie and Edward sniping at each other in that odd way they did that was one part love, one part self-hatred, a third part disdain. Renesmee, when she had been younger, trying everyone's patience and most of all her parents'. The way the house would eventually rise to a fever pitch like a thrumming beehive and Carlisle would eventually retreat to his study, simultaneously craving solitude and also intensely grateful that, these days, solitude was so hard to come by. Eventually, his wife would come find him, standing next to his chair and raking her hands through his hair as she pulled his head to her bosom.</p>
<p>Solitude was, unfortunately, easier to find these days. With the children in Europe and the two of them alone in the house which seemed strangely too large without the omniscience of Edward's gift, quiet was their constant companion.</p>
<p>The chaos now, too, was different. Instead of the raucousness of their large family, this was the chaos of sawdust and century-old plaster, warped floorboards with haphazard nails—nails which couldn't hurt either of them, of course, but which still seemed to appear out of the ether in places Carlisle could've sworn they hadn't existed twelve hours ago.</p>
<p>He'd retreated to their bedroom, or what was left of it. His body remembered the route more than his mind did, up the staircase and to the right, through the second doorway. The footprint was still here; wall studs turned a deep brown with age and striped with the pattern of the lath boards which had been removed and carefully stacked in a corner. Esme had told him that he wasn't to touch them; she'd salvage what she could.</p>
<p>The house needed new systems. It had been built with only the most nascent plumbing, and while he'd run electricity, it was the electricity which had been able to be run at the time;; not what was standard now. Esme would restore it to its mid nineteenth century glory in the end, but first it needed bringing into the twenty-first. For now there were no walls, just an eerie skeleton of what once had been, with bright-yellow conduit dangling like vine, and red and blue flexible plumbing snaking its way to rooms which soon would again be the kitchen and bathrooms and making the house look like the anatomy textbooks Carlisle was more used to. Blue veins, red arteries. It made sense to him to think of the house like a body—helped him make sense of and honor his wife's diligent work.</p>
<p>Esme was on the roof when he slid into the remains of their bedroom, having shed his briefcase, his peacoat, and his white doctor's coat as he passed the foyer, the coat closet, and the hamper, respectively. She understood his desire to live as humanly as possible, and so she had warned him that the roof was coming off for a few days while she brought the trusses up to twenty-first century building code. But that hadn't happened yet, and for now, there was still this ghost of the structure of the home he had bought a century ago, when his only identity had been "sire" and sometimes, if he dared to think it, and Edward had allowed him, "father." And so he stripped down to his scrubs and sat, cross-legged, on the floor of the furniture-less bedroom. The sound from above him was rhythmic as his wife worked through the existing structure. First the scraping of the wrecking bar, then the quiet ping of the nail releasing from the roof, then the resounding thwap of the shingle hitting the ground two floors below.</p>
<p><em>Scrape. Scrape. Ping. Thwap</em>. The repetition was meditative, and he allowed himself to get lost in it. He was so deep in his own thoughts that he missed the cessation of sound on the roof, the quiet sounds of tools being put carefully back into place, the opening and closing of closet doors in what was left of the frame of the house.</p>
<p>He finally became aware when he heard the <em>thunk</em> of the tool belt in the foyer, the toeing off of the unnecessary work boots. The soft padding of socked feet on the bare, stripped staircase. A moment later, the light shading through the patchwork of lath which awaited replacement revealed a feminine silhouette, arms crossed as she regarded him coolly.</p>
<p>"How much longer do we get to keep the roof?" he asked.</p>
<p>"I should have it off by tomorrow midday. I timed it with your long shift." The socked feet padded across the room and then she, too, had dropped into a cross-legged posture behind him. A split second later her lips were at the base of his neck. "That is, if you don't distract me too much while you're home, Dr. Cullen."</p>
<p>He smirked a little. "I know better than to separate you from a demolition."</p>
<p>She laughed her clear laughter, and he twisted a little so that their lips could meet. They kissed for several seconds, the gentle, familiar kiss of the long-married, her hand finding its way to his hip.</p>
<p>"You've had a bad day," she said when their lips parted. It wasn't a question.</p>
<p>He nodded.</p>
<p>"Do you want to talk about it?"</p>
<p>"Not particularly." He looked toward the ceiling, or what once had been the ceiling. It was now, like everything else, bare beams, the odd mixture of new and very old, and he could see to the roof, where the removal of the shingles had exposed the places where the old roof boards had shrunk away from one another, letting in little slivers of daylight.</p>
<p>"I'm looking forward to furniture," he admitted. "How far in the future is that?"</p>
<p>She laughed again. "I'll get you some for Christmas. In the meantime…" She patted her thigh and, almost without thinking, he lay down, putting his head in her lap. In the same instant, her hands were in his hair, her fingertips against his scalp as she combed through it.</p>
<p>It had taken decades, this part of their relationship. He had been used to fending for himself, convincing himself that he was invincible. And Edward, as glorious as he had been, had only made this aspect worse, as every day, Carlisle had tried even harder to be Edward's rock. And so when Esme had joined them, it had taken him years to admit to even the slightest crack, and even longer to reach this utter surrender.</p>
<p>He closed his eyes, letting his senses be overcome by the feeling of fingers in his hair, the sound of breath, rolling in and out, the way the cinnamon-lilac-honey of his wife's scent was overlaid with the burned, chemical stench of decades-old roofing pitch.</p>
<p>"There were eleven today," he muttered finally, not opening his eyes. They'd moved because of the surge here, and he had steeled himself for it. Nothing he'd faced in the States held a candle to Italy, not even this, but the comparison didn't make it any easier. Sometimes, he'd walked out of the room; let a nurse in full protective equipment, looking like an astronaut hold a phone in a gloved hand as family members on FaceTime looked on while their parent or grandparent slipped away from life. Other times, he stayed: He was the one to hold the phone, to flick the ventilator to the OFF position, to witness the deep, rattling, final breaths.</p>
<p>His wife sighed sadly. "Eleven is so many."</p>
<p>"One is too many. This whole year is too many." One by one, the same progression, over and over. Ctyokine. Hypoxia. Multisystem organ failure. The same sequence, the same dread, the same point of no return. And if he thought too long or too hard, he could recall each and every face.</p>
<p>As assuredly as though she were Edward, seeing the images in his head, she murmured, "It <em>will</em> end, Carlisle."</p>
<p>He sighed. "I know." And he did know. Cholera, Typhoid, Scarlet Fever, Polio, and two times around the dance floor with H1N1—they always ended.</p>
<p>That didn't make now any easier.</p>
<p>Carlisle squeezed his eyes closed as one hand in his hair made its way to his back, the other to his arm. He let his body go slack as he let the day's pain slip away into her hands.</p>
<p>"Thank you," he breathed several minutes later.</p>
<p>"Thank you for letting me in," his wife answered, bending deeply and pressing her lips to his again.</p>
<p>He chuckled. "Well, it's hard to keep you out when we don't have any walls."</p>
<p>Carlisle felt, more than heard, Esme's answering laughter. It was a tiny cough of a laugh, small against the all the world was throwing at them.</p>
<p>But, he realized as he allowed himself to rest, it was also just enough.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Faces</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <b>Faces</b>
</p><p><em><span>Fall, 1934<br/>
</span></em><em><span>Amherst, MA</span></em> <span><br/>
</span><span><br/>
</span> <span>It was an utterly ordinary afternoon. Rosalie and Edward had recently returned from university, and the sounds of their bickering rose up the stairs. Why the two of them did not find their peace elsewhere, she didn’t know. She might send them off to hunt, she thought. Perhaps in different counties. </span></p><p>
  <span>Yet there was something familiar about the way the two of them had fallen into rhythm as siblings. Edward, older and younger brother at once. Rosalie, full of disastrously-won wisdom and always aggrieved, unwilling to listen to Edward’s point of view. There was no sign that they would ever be the partners Esme’s husband had once imagined, hoping that </span>
  <em>
    <span>a </span>
  </em>
  <span>woman might solve the same hole in Edward’s heart that Esme herself had solved in his. And yet there was a camaraderie in their arguments and insults, a rhythm to their family dynamic that somehow made it more whole. They were true siblings—occasionally quietly bonded over the latest news from Chevrolet, more often sniping like children about closed bedroom doors.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Carlisle, though—he was more difficult. Rosalie had snapped at him before he’d left for work. Her resentment knew no bounds, exacerbated by the knowledge that even in his moment of profoundly foolish savior-complex, he had been thinking of Edward, and the pain that still burned in his own heart, two years after their prodigal son had returned…</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Esme wasn’t sure Rosalie would ever forgive him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She wasn’t sure Rosalie </span>
  <em>
    <span>should. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Her husband didn’t know how to relate to a daughter, Esme understood. His son had completed him so fully—unlocking with his gift the centuries of solitude which made Carlisle Cullen who he was. Like everything of importance Carlisle did, he had turned Rosalie rashly, without regard to the effects on anyone else. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Rosalie was just strong enough to force him to pay the price for that.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Esme recalled her husband’s slumped shoulders as he exited the house after the latest round of berating from his daughter. The look in his eyes of utter defeat. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“She’ll cool off,” Esme had whispered to him hours before, but she hadn’t—as usual, she had taken her discomfort out on Edward. And as Esme listened to the voices reaching a fever pitch downstairs—a back and forth which grew increasingly intense but did not reach a point where she needed to intervene—she selected charcoal, her hand flying across the paper on her easel before she even knew what she was beginning. As so many times before, it was her husband’s face which began to emerge. She had drawn him how many dozens of times in the ten years between the time she had met him and when she had awoken to this new life. The high cheekbones, the square jaw, the singular lock of utterly unruly hair at his temple which seemed to exist only to prove that there were some things Carlisle Cullen could never control. She had forced herself to recall those features over and over, to render them in more permanent forms—charcoal, pencil, oil pastel. Over and over she had drawn him until his face had been committed not only to the memory of her mind but also the memory of her fingers.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She had never planned to have a daughter. She had known, somehow, from the moment she felt the first strange sensation in her abdomen. Not a kick or a flutter or any of the things that her girlfriends had told her to expect, but instead as though some of her internal organs simply…flipped over. She had touched her own belly in awe, and had known right then, without thinking, that it was a male child. Perhaps a daughter would have softened her husband, but she knew, somehow, that a male child was in greater danger. That he would not be protected; that he would be pushed, that the expectation upon his barely-formed shoulders would be impossible. It had been this conviction that had put her on the Great Lakes train, whisked her to a state she’d never seen before, and which later drove her from her cousin’s to the very northern tip of the country.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Then her son had been born, with his tiny body and his squalling voice and his perfect smell, only to be ripped away fewer than two days later. And she had reached out in despair and found not her son, but the gentle face she had sketched for a decade, staring down at her. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Today, as she laid out the roughest outline of her husband’s familiar form, Esme was not fully aware that somehow, she had softened the beautiful severity of his cheekbones, that she had added subtle curvature to the sharpness of his jaw. But she had done so, and it wasn’t Carlisle’s face which was emerging. </span>
</p><p><span>It had been an entire year, now, that their family of three had been a family of four. And a scant single score of years that the hardened bachelor and his beloved son had welcomed </span><em><span>any </span></em><span>feminine presence into their lives. She had worried about being a bother to them both, and she knew, that sometimes, she was—the way Edward’s eyes would narrow from time to time, the way Carlisle shadowed him when he was upset. </span><span><br/>
</span> <span>And so she tried. She tried to reach to Rosalie. She tried to bridge the shared elements of their past, only to be met with the coldest of shoulders. This family, Rosalie seemed to say, was the world of the men. Rose hated Carlisle for his hubris, hated Edward for his gift, and if she didn’t hate Esme, it was only for Esme’s shared experience of these two things. </span></p><p>
  <span>So, as she thought of her daughter, listened to bickering give way to quiet conversation, and then to silence, and then to the gentle chords of a sonata, the cheekbones softened, the jawbone became subtler, the high forehead became heart-shaped with a widow’s peak. The nose became thinner, the lips softer, and the single unruly lock of golden hair became dozens, spilling onto shoulders which sloped more gently. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was difficult for vampires to get fully lost in work, and so she heard the front door open and close. Edward was still playing, and wherever Rose had moved to—her bedroom, if the distance to her scent was to believed—she was quiet. So Esme knew that her husband was home even before she heard a briefcase drop gently to the floor and before the waft of smoked cinnamon made its way to her nose. She had a split-second to consider this fact before warm lips had buried themselves where her neck met her collarbone. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What are you drawing,” her husband muttered, and she shook her head. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Nothing.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s never nothing.” He stepped back and appraised the easel, reaching out with one hand. She laid down her charcoal and smacked his arm playfully. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It isn’t nothing. But I’m not finished yet. Go bother the children.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He sighed. “They’re fighting.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“They’ve been fighting all afternoon. It’s quieter, now.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her husband chuckled, pressing his lips to her neck again. “I apologize for leaving you alone all day with that.”  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She shook her head. “Edward plays impromptus when he’s angry with Rose. It’s good background.” It had been Fauré , today—the impossibly fast descending scales across the keyboard, sounding like water. Esme had never bothered to learn the details of classical music before, but now it was impossible not to—she marveled at times at the way her mind was able to store the names of styles and composers and even the actual beats of the music itself. She hadn’t cared, before, but with Edward, it became a thing about which one cared. To love Edward was to love his piano, and that meant that all of them learned to understand it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Give me another half-hour?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her husband nodded, kissing her neck again and then disappearing. The piano stopped mid-phrase, and she heard only one-sided murmurs which told her that Carlisle and Edward were engaged in one of their desperately intimate conversations. If she strained, she could hear them, no doubt, but she chose not to, letting her hand bring shape to the face whose provenance she now understood. She kept the long eyelashes, and the light-hued eyes. She made the lips ever so slightly fuller, and drew the slightest hint of a bosom at the bottom of the page.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was longer than a half hour before Carlisle returned. From the subtle addition to his scent, it seemed likely he had been sitting with Edward at the piano the entire time. Edward could read Carlisle’s mind, of course, but after a decade and a half, it often seemed that Carlisle could read Edward’s almost as surely. They often sat in silent companionship, Edward playing, Carlisle listening, bonded by their thoughts and impenetrable by either Rosalie or Esme. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Carlisle kissed her before even bothering to look at the easel. She let herself fall into the kiss, the way her husband’s supple lips moved against her own. It was only several minutes later that he seemed to remember what he had intended to inquire after, and pulled away to appraise the drawing. His head cocked to one side as he gazed at it, his mouth falling open slightly in recognition.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He had revealed this sad fact in their very first conversation. She, half-delirious from the laudanum, he, trying bravely to keep his demeanor professional. Yet even with her hazy, opiate-influenced human memory, she recalled the encounter with nearly the same crystal clarity that he did. As she’d asked after his name, and after receiving his title, asked his first name, which he had, to his own surprise, volunteered.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ve never met a Carlisle before,” she’d told him, and he’d only smirked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Nor I an Esme. One wonders why you are not a Mary, or a Margaret.”</span>
</p><p><span>And she’d returned his smile and his gentle banter. She had inquired where the unusual name had come from, and he had answered that perhaps it was his mother’s maiden name, and then she had asked after his mother, eliciting the same pained, faraway look that graced his features now as he explained how and when she had died... </span><span><br/>
</span> <span>“Not knowing what your father looked like,” Esme offered as he stared silently, “I wasn’t sure which of your features to subtract, but…”</span></p><p>
  <span>The gulp was audible. “No,” her husband said quietly, “I imagine this is about right.” Another deep swallow, then: “What brought this on?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She shrugged. “I’m not even sure myself.” Involuntarily, her right hand opened and closed, feeling the ghost of the charcoal still in her fingers. She sighed. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Rose,” she said quietly. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Carlisle shot her a quizzical look.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I suppose I was thinking about Rose. And how you left with her still angry.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>There were two stools in Esme’s studio, one before each easel, both unnecessary in the strictest sense, but they encouraged the right posture for sweeping her arm across wide paper or canvas. Carlisle pulled the second one near her and sat down, his lips suddenly pressed tight.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“She hates me,” he muttered. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Esme nodded. “Sometimes, yes. You don’t always make it easy for her.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He thrust a hand into his hair, and the unruly lock fell through his fingers. When he spoke again, his voice was clipped with frustration. “I just want her to be happy.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You can’t force people to be happy, Carlisle.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>To her surprise, he chuckled. “You’d think that after what happened with Edward, I’d know that.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She laughed in answer. Two years on, their mercurial son was beginning to recover from his shame and anger. Gentler songs came from the piano more often than not, and every now and then, even an original composition. Slowly, month by month, arpeggio by arpeggio, he was coming back to them. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I suppose…” she began. When she hadn’t finished her sentence a moment later, Carlisle prodded. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You suppose?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She gestured. She had drawn the woman with the same tired but indulgently kind eyes her husband had. Eyes that suggested that whatever the person being looked on was wont to do, they would be forgiven. They would be loved.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You have a daughter now,” she said gently. “I suppose I thought it might be helpful for you to remember that once, you had a mother, too.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her husband’s thin lips pressed together even more tightly, and she saw his adam’s apple move yet again. She stood up, brushing the charcoal off her fingertips against her skirt as she leaned in to kiss his cheek. She laid a hand on his shoulder briefly, then went down the stairs. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was nearly two hours of listening to the piano later, watching Rosalie read and pretend not to care what Edward was playing, before Esme bothered to creep back up to her studio. The door was still open a crack, and the air was still thick with her husband’s scent as she peeked inside.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Carlisle sat alone in the utter dark, his legs crossed, the moonbeams shading in through the window making his skin a translucent blue white as he gazed up into the portrait’s kind, pale eyes. Slowly, his hand crept from his side to reach out, the pad of his finger tracing the jawline she had sketched. And then it hung there, index finger outstretched, as though it was not the strong, assured hand of a surgeon but the beseeching hand of a child, reaching, desperately, across space and time.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Quietly, Esme pulled the door closed and went to find her daughter.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>~||x||~</span>
</p><p>
  <span>for </span>
  <b>needahugfromesme</b>
</p>
  </div></div>
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